show me what you got, north wales

Everyone told me all I would get was rain (slanty, sideways, etc) and sheep, but I found North Wales quite charming. No rain. There were sheep, but... ya know... not that many. Torcuil and his pilot friend Mike picked me up in Flint and from there, we drove to Conwy to visit Conwy Castle. We read up on the whole series of castles in Wales built by one of the great baddies in Scottish history, Edward I (aka Edward Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots-- for those of you whose Scottish history is limited to Braveheart.) (Also see Caernarfon Castle-- we almost went there instead.) 

We looked for dungeons, laughed about the educational spin put on medieval barbarism for students, (murder holes! you could use these to dump tar on attackers! [yay!])  tried some local Conwy ales (they were decent) and I definitely learned the names of some birds  I would never have been able to identify otherwise. 

Took a stroll around Ruthin, where Torc lives (ps- my favorite part of this wikipedia entry is the assessment of Ruthin's crime rate- hilarious) got some dinner, and then the next morning, I saw a bit of super adorable Chester when Torc dropped me off here to catch my train to London. 

North Wales-- good times. Get into it.